Bible Commentaries

1st day, The Light;

4th day, The Luminaries;

2d day, The Waters under and above the Firmament;

5th day, The Fishes in the Seas and the Birds of the Heavens;

3d day, The Liberated Earth-Soil, and the Plants upon it;

6th day, The Land-Animals, and over them Man.

14And God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. And it was Song of Solomon 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth; 18And to rule over the day, and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good [fourth pause of contemplation]. 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day 20 And God said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly [Lange: Let the waters swarm] the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly [Lange and English marg. rendering: Let fowl fly] above the earth in the open firmament of heaven 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. And God saw that it was good [fifth pause of contemplation]. 22And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas; and let fowl multiply in the earth 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day 24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind. And it was Song of Solomon 25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind. And God saw that it was good [sixth pause of contemplation].

D.—The Limit, Aim, of all the Creative Days (especially of the three last), the Antitype of the Vegetable Creation at the End of the Third Day: which Antitype is man, the Likeness of God, and the Sabbath, in which God rests from His Work.

26And God said: Let us make man in our image after³ our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth 27 So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them. Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth 29 And God said: Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruitof a tree yielding seed; to you shall it be for meat; 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat. And it was Song of Solomon 31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good [seventh pause of contemplation] And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Genesis 2:1-2 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested [had begun to rest] from all his work which [he as] God created and made [Lange: um es zu machen; English marg.: created to make]. ⁴

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. See on the Introduction to Genesis, and under the head of Literature, the catalogue of cosmological works that belong here. Compare, especially, the Literature Catalogue given by Knobel and Delitzsch.

2. The passages of Scripture that have a special connection: Job; Psalm 8, 19, 104; Proverbs 8; Isaiah 40; John 1:1; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2; Hebrews 11:3; Revelation 21:1

3. This account of the world’s creation evidently forms an ascending line, a series of generations whose highest point and utmost limit is reached in man. The six days’ works arrange themselves in orderly contrast; and in correspondence to this are the sections as they have been distinguished by us: a. The creation of heaven and earth in general, and which may also be regarded as the first constituting of the symbolical opposition of the two; b. the three first creative days, or the three great divisions which constitute the great elementary oppositions or polarities of the world, and which are the conditioning of all creature-life: 1. The element of light and the dark shadow-casting masses, or the concrete darkness, and which we must not confound with the evening and the morning; 2. the gaseous form of the æther, especially of the atmosphere, and the fluid form of the earth-sphere; 3. the opposition between the water and the firm land. In respect to this it must be observed that the waters, of Genesis 1:2, are a different thing from the waters of Genesis 1:6; Genesis 1:9, since it still encloses the light and the matter of the earth. Moreover, “the waters” of Genesis 1:6 is not yet properly water; since it encloses still the earth material. The first mention of elementary water in the proper sense, is at Genesis 1:9. c. The three last creative days, wherein the above parallel is to be observed; d. the limit or aim of creation—man—the sabbath of God.

4. Genesis 1:1-2, the ground-laying for the creation of the heaven and the earth. Considered cosmologically and geologically.—In the beginning.— The construction maintained by Bunsen and others (Raschi, Ewald, Aben Ezra) is as follows: In the beginning when God created heaven and earth, and when the earth was waste and desolate, and darkness was over the primeval flood, and the breath of God moved upon the waters, then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. This construction is, in the first place, opposed throughout to the language of Genesis, as in its brief yet grand declarations it proceeds from one concluded sentence to another. Secondly, it contradicts the context, in which the creation of light is a significant, yet still an isolated, moment. If we were to follow Bunsen, it would be the introduction of the Persian light-religion rather than the religion of the Old Testament. And, finally, in the third place, it obliterates that distinguishing ground-idea of the theocratic monotheism with which, in the very start, the word of revelation confronts all pagan dualism,—in other words, the truth, that in regard to the manner of creation, God is the sole causality of heaven and earth in an absolute sense. The view of Aben Ezra that בְּרֵאשִׁית is ever in the construct state, and that it means here, “in the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth,” etc, is contradicted by the occurrence of the word in the absolute state, Deuteronomy 33:21.—בְּרֵאשִׁית (from רֹאש = רֵאשׁ). The substantive without the article. It is true, this cannot be rendered in the beginning, taken absolutely, so that the beginning should have a significance, or an existence for itself. It would be, moreover, a tautology to say in the beginning of things when God created them, etc, that is, when there was the beginning of things; or else we must take bereshith mystically: in principio, that is, in filio, as Basil, Ambrose, and others (see Leop. Schmid, Explanation of the Holy Scriptures, p4), which is not allowable, although it is true that the New Testament doctrine advances at once to the determination that God created all things through the Son ( John 1:3; John 1:11; Hebrews 1:2; comp. Psalm 33:6). It is not easy to take the word adverbially: originally, or in the first place (Knobel); for the immediately following enumeration of the creative days shows that the author would have time begin with the creation of the world. According to Delitzsch the author does not mean “to express the doctrinal proposition that the world had its beginning in time, and is not eternal, but only that the creation of the heavens and the earth was the beginning of all history.” This interpretation seems arbitrary. Bereshith relates especially to time, or to the old, the first time ( Isaiah 46:10; Job 42:12). It may be further said that בְּ can mean with or through. It is, therefore, the most obvious way to interpret it: in a beginning, and that, too, the first, or the beginning of time, God created the heavens and the earth (with the time the space; the latter denoted through the antitheses of heaven and earth). From that first beginning must be distinguished the six new beginnings of the six days’ works; for the creating goes on through the six days. In a beginning of time, therefore, that lies back of the six days’ works, must that first foundation-plan of the world have been made, along with the creation of the heaven and the earth in their opposition. The first verse is therefore not a superscription for the representation that follows, but the completed ouranology despatched in one general declaration, although the cosmical generation, which is described Genesis 1:3 and Genesis 1:14, is again denoted along with it. That the sun, moon, and stars are perfected for the earth on the fourth day, is an indication that God’s creating still goes on in the heavens, even as the creating of the periods of development in the earth, after its first condition as waste and desolate, when it went forth from the hand of God as a spherical form without any distinct inward configuration.—בָּרָא, in Piel to cut, hew, form; but in Kal it is usually employed of divine productions new, or not previously existing in the “sphere of nature or history ( Exodus 34:10; Numbers 16:30, and frequently in the Prophets), or of spirit ( Psalm 51:12, and the frequent κτίζειν in the N. T.); but never denoting human productions, and never used with the accusative of the material.” Delitzsch. And thus the conception of creating is akin to that of the miraculous, in so far that the former would mean a creating in respect to initial form, the latter in respect to novelty of production. (On the kindred expressions in the Zendavesta, see Delitzsch.) It is to be noted how בָּרָא differs from עָשָׂה and יִצֶר ( Genesis 2:2 and Genesis 1:7). That in this creating there is not meant, at all, any demiurgical forming out of pre-existing material, appears from the fact that the kind of material, as something then or just created, is strongly signified in the first condition of the earth, Genesis 1:2, and in the creation of light. This shows itself, in like manner, in the general unconditioned declaration that God is the creative author, or original, of heaven and earth.—Elohim, see the Divine Names in the Introduction.—הַשָׁמַיִם. According to the Arabic it would denote the antithesis of the High (or the height) to the Lower—that is, the earth. The plural form is significant, denoting the abundance and the variety of the upper spaces.⁵ This appears still more in the expression, the heaven of heavens ( Deuteronomy 10:14, and Psalm 68:34).

5. Genesis 1:2-5. Preparation of the geologico-cosmological description of the days’ works. First Creative Day.—תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ. The earth was. This is spoken of its unarranged original or fundamental state, or of heaven and earth in general. Thohu Vabohu, alliteratives and at the same time rhymes, or like sounding; similar alliteratives occurring thus in all the Pentateuch as signs of very old and popular forms of expression ( Genesis 4:12; Exodus 23:1; Exodus 23:5; Numbers 5:18; Deuteronomy 2:15). We find them also in Isaiah and elsewhere as characteristic features of a poetical, artistic, keen, and soaring spirit. They are at the same time pictorial and significant of the earth’s condition. For, according to Hupfeld and Delitzsch, תֹהוּ passes over from the primitive sense of roaring to that of desolateness and confusion. The last becomes the common sense, or that which characterizes the natural waste ( Deuteronomy 32:10) as a positive desolation, as, for example, of a city ( Isaiah 34:11). It is through the conception of voidness, nothingness, that Thohu and Bohu are connected. Delitzsch regards the latter word as related to בהם, which means to be brutal. Both seem doubtful, but the more usual reference to בהה in the sense of void or emptiness is to be preferred. We have aimed at giving the rhyming or similarity of the sounds in our translation (German: öden-wüst and wüsten-öd). The desert is waste, that is, a confused mass without order; the waste is desert, that is, void, without distinction of object. The first word denotes rather the lack of form, the second the lack of content in the earliest condition of the earth. It might, therefore, be translated form-less, matter-less. “Rudis indigestaque moles, in a word, a chaos,” says Delitzsch. It would be odd if in this the biblical view should so cleanly coincide with the mythological. Chaos denotes the void space (as in a similar manner the old Northern Ginnun-gagap, gaping of yawnings, the gaping abyss, which also implies present existing material), and in the next place the rude unorganized mass of the world-material. There is, however, already here the world-form, heaven and earth, and along with this a universal heaven-and-earth-form is presupposed. It is not said that in the beginning the condition of the heavens was thohu and bohu,—at least of the heavens of the earth-world, as Delitzsch maintains; at all events, the earth goes neither out of chaos, nor out of “the same chaos” as the heavens. It is clean against the text to say that the chaos, as something that is primarily the earth, embraces, at the same time, the heaven that exists with and for the earth. For it is very clear that the language relates to the original condition of the earth, although the genesis of the earth may serve, by way of analogy, for the genesis of the universe. וְחשֶׁך, the first condition of the earth was תְהוֹם (from הום, to roar, be in commotion), wave, storm-flood, ocean, abyss. The first state of the earth was itself the Thehom, and over this roaring-flood lay the darkness spread abroad. It is wholly anticipatory when we say that “this undulating mass of waters was not the earth itself in the condition of thohu and bohu, but that it enclosed it; for on the third day the firm land (אָרֶץ) goes forth from the waters.” Delitzsch. Further on, Psalm 104:6 is cited to show that, originally, water proper surrounded the firm earth-kernel, and Job 38:8, according to which the sea breaks forth out of the mother’s womb (the earth)—poetical representations that are true enough, if one does not take them according to the letter; in which case they are in direct contradiction to each other. The waters, of Genesis 1:2, is quite another thing than the water proper of the third creative day; it is the fluid (or gaseous) form of the earth itself in its first condition. 2 Peter 3:5 is not opposed to this; for as the water takes form, the earth breaks out of the water, just as the water comes forth from the earth in consequence of the creative division. The darkness is just the absence of the phenomenal, or the absence of light (for the vision view) in the condition of the earth itself,—in other words, night.—וְרוּחַ, But the spirit of God hovered over (Ang, moved upon). The breath of man, the wind of the earth, and the spirit, especially the spirit of God, are symbolical analogies. The breath is the life-unity and life-motion of the physical creature, the wind is the unity and life-motion of the earth, the spirit is the unity and life-motion of the life proper to which it belongs; the spirit of God is the unity and life-motion of the creative divine activity. It is not a wind of God to which the language here primarily relates (Theodoret, Saadia, Herder, and others), but the spirit of God truly (wherefore the word רחף, Delitzsch; comp. Psalm 33:6). From this place onward, and throughout the whole Scripture, the spirit of God is the single formative principle evermore presenting itself with personal attributes in all the divine creative constitutions, whether of the earth, of nature, of the theocracy, of the Tabernacle, of the church, of the new life, or of the new man. The Grecian analogue is that of Eros (or Love) in its reciprocal action with the Chaos, and to this purpose have the later Targums explained it: the spirit of love. It was מְרַחֶפֶת (hovering) over the waters. The conception of brooding cannot be obtained out of Deuteronomy 32:11 (Delitzsch), for the eagle does not brood over the living young, but wakes them, draws them out (educates), makes them lively.⁶ The mythological world-egg of the Persians has no place here. Should we adopt any view of this formative energy of the spirit of God (which may have worked upon the unorganized mass through the medium of a great wind of God) it would consist in this, that by its inflowing it differentiated this mass, that is, conformably to its being, called out points of unity, and divisions which fashioned the mass to multiplicity in the contrasts that follow. It separated the heterogenous, and bound together the homogenous, and so prepared the way for the dividing the light from the darkness. It cannot be said, however, that “all the co-energizing powers in the formation of the world were the emanations or determinations of this spirit of God.” For we must distinguish the creative words with בָרָא from יָצַר, or the forming by the spirit of God.⁷ The object, however, of this forming is not the primitive matter, but the flowing earth-sphere. Just as little can one say that the six days’ works have their beginning in Genesis 1:3; for the result of the first day is not the light merely, but also the darkness (see Isaiah 45:7). Concerning the theosophic interpretation of thohu vabohu as a world in ruins which had come from God’s judgment on the Fall of the Angels (see Genesis 1:3).

Genesis 1:3. Let there be light.—Here begin the geologico-cosmical creative periods. This new beginning, therefore, must be distinguished from that first creation of the heavens and the earth which is to be regarded as having no creative beginning before it. Henceforth the treatment is that of a sacred geology, yet regarded in its biblical sense as geologico-cosmological. Hence, in Genesis 1:3, the creation of the light-heaven; Genesis 1:8, the creation of the air-heaven; Genesis 1:14, the creation of the star-heaven; Genesis 1:26, the creation of the heavenly core of the earth itself.⁸—And God said.—“Ten times is this word, וַיּאֹמֶר, repeated in the history of the seven days.” The omnipotence of the creative word, Psalm 33:9 : He spake and it was done, he commanded and it stood ( Romans 4:17). The creative-word in its deeper significance: Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 40:26; John 1:1-3; Hebrews 1:2; Hebrews 11:3; Colossians 1:16. The light, the first distinct creative formation, and, therefore, the formation-principle, or the pre-conditioning for all further formations. Of this formative dividing power of light, physical science teaches us. It is now tolerably well understood, that the light is not conditioned by perfected luminous bodies, but, on the contrary, that light bodies are conditioned by a preceding luminous element. Thus there is set aside the objection taken by Celsus, by the Manichæans, and by rationalism generally, namely, the supposed inversion of order in having first the light and afterwards the luminous body. And yet the light without any substratum is just as little conceivable as the darkness. The question arises, how the author conceived the going forth of the light, whether out of the dark bosom of the earth-flood, or out of the dark bosom of the forming heaven? As the view of the heavenly lights (light bodies) Genesis 1:14, is geocentric, so may the same view prevail here of the heaven-light itself. By this is meant that in the fact of the first illumination of the earth the author presents the fact of the birth of light generally in the world, without declaring thereby that the date of the genesis of the earth’s light is also the date of the genesis of light universally. But we may well take the birth of light in the earth (or the earth becoming light) as the analogue whereon is presented the birth of light in the heaven, just as in the creation of man there is symbolized the creation of the spirit-world collectively. We let alone here the question whether the light is an emanation (an outflowing) of a luminous element, or an undulation from a luminous body; only it may be remarked that sound goes on all sides, and may, therefore, be supposed to undulate in sonorous waves, whilst the ray of light, on the other hand, goes directly, for which reason the application to it of such an undulation of sonorous waves would seem unsuitable. The idea of an ætherial vibration may make a medium between emanation and undulation. Without doubt, however, the meaning here is not merely a light-appearing which goes forth out of the heaven-ground,⁹ and breaks through the dark vapor of the earth, or from heavenly clouds of light (such as the primary form of the creation may have appeared to be), but an immediate lighting up of the luminous element in the earth itself, something like what the Polar night gives rise to in the northern aurora; enough that it is said of the contrast presented between the illuminating and the shade-producing element. The light goes, however, in the first place, out of the dark world-forms (not the mere world material) after that the spirit of God, as formative principle, has energized in them. The spirit of God is the spiritual light that goes out from God; therefore its working goes before the creation of the outer light; and therefore, too, it is that this light is the symbol, and its operation similar to the operation, of the spirit—that is, the formation and the revelation of beauty.—And there was light.—The famed sublimity of this expression as given by Longinus (in a somewhat doubtful text) and others, is predicated on the pure simplicity and confidence with which it sets forth the omnipotence of the creative word.—And God saw the light that it was good.—The first beauty is the light itself. For the Hebrew טוֹב denotes the beautiful along with the good, even as the Greek καλὸν denotes the good along with the beautiful. The sense: that it was good, does not seem easy; and therefore Tertullian (and more lately Neumann) have accepted the quia of the Itala. On the other hand, Delitzsch remarks: “The conclusion is that to God each single work of creation appears good.” The conclusion lies, perhaps, in the pause of solemn contemplation, out of which, at the end, goes forth the perfect sabbath. It is because the religious human soul recognizes the fair and the good in the event of the appearing, that there is therein reflected to it the fountain of this spiritual ethical satisfaction, namely the contemplation of God Himself. Still the contemplation of God does not regard the object as though captivated by it because it is fair, but it rejoices therein that it is fair; or we may say that, in a certain manner, it is the very efficacy of this contemplation that it becomes fair.—And God divided between the light and the darkness.—Although it is farther said that God named the light day and the darkness night, still it must not be supposed that here there is meant only the interchange between day and night as the ordaining of the points of division between both, namely morning and evening. Although light and darkness, day and night, are called after their appearing, yet are they still, all the more, very day and night, in other words, the very causalities themselves. The light denotes all that is simply illuminating in its efficacy, all the luminous element; the darkness denotes all that is untransparent, dark, shadow-casting; both together denote the polarity of the created world, as it exists between the light-formations and the night-formations—the constitution of the day and night. “One sees,” says Delitzsch, “how false is the current and purely privative conception of darkness; as when, for example, a mediæval interpreter (Maxima Bibl. Lugd. vi. p868) says: sicut silentium nihil Esther, sed ubi vox non est silentium dicitur, sic tenebrœ nihil sunt, sed ubi lux non est tenebrœ dicuntur.” It is true, there must be presupposed for the daylight an illuminating source or fountain of light, and so for the darkness a shadow-casting causality ( James 1:16); but it would be quite wrong to say that light and darkness are two principles (according to the course of the earlier theosophists: Jacob Böhm, and a later school: Baumgarten and others). If it is farther said that the darkness has not the witness טוֹב (good), it may be replied that it certainly has it mediately, Genesis 1:31. It is indeed said still earlier: “We do not read that the tohu and bohu, that the tehom with the darkness lying over it originated in the divine call into being (fiat), therefore they had their origin in some other way.” This is a very unwarranted conclusion; so also, then, must the heavens have originated in some other way. The heaven, however, has its origin in the word of the Lord ( Psalm 33), and so also the night and the darkness ( Isaiah 45:7) as well as the abyss ( Psalm 104:8). It is, therefore, a hard inconsequence when Delitzsch, following the mythological views, regards the thohu wabhohu as the chaos enclosing even the heaven in its birth (p93), and still farther regards it theosophically as the ruined habitation of condemned demons. In the historical derivation of the last opinion (p105) Delitzsch appears to have confounded two distinct views: the scholastic, that God had formed the human world for the purpose of filling up the void that arose in heaven after the fall of the angels, and the theosophic, that the terrestrial region of the world was, in the earlier time, the abode of Lucifer and his companions, which afterwards, through their guilt, became a thohu vabhohu out of which God laid the foundation of a new world. In this view the thohu vabhohu is “the glowing material mass into which the power of God’s wrath had melted the original world after it had become corrupted by the fall of the spirits (pp105,114below),—or it was the rudis indigestaque moles into which God had compressed and precipitated that spiritual but now ungodly world condemned to the flames in consequence of its materializing, and this for the purpose of making it the substratum of a new creation which had its beginning in the fact that God had placed the chaos of this old fire-invaded world wholly under water.” One might well ask: shall the fire-brand itself (the old burnt-up earth) be the chaos, or the divine reaction through the quenching in water? Was the fire-brand the work of the demons, or did it come through God’s judgment and counteraction? All such resolutions of the difficulty are in a state of mutual confusion. And this is no wonder, for a certain theosophic hankering after dualism with its two principles can only veil itself in dark and fantastic phrases. In opposition to these gnosticising representations of matter, the demands of a pure monotheism require of us an acquiescence in the idea that matter too is good, because it is from God,—in so far, indeed, as we can speak of pure matter in general terms. The more particular fountain of this view—after certain older preludes and popular representations (Delitzsch, p106) derived from Gnostic traditions—is Jacob Böhm (Myst. Magn. p67) and the Gnostic teachers that arose after him, Friedrich von Meyer, Baumgarten (Genesis), and others. With peculiar zeal hath Kurtz also taken part in these theosophic phantasies, as also in those other of the miscegenations or sexual confusions between the angels of heaven and the daughters of earth ( Genesis 6). The grounds presented by Delitzsch, in opposition to his earlier contrary view (as given in the first two editions of his Commentary), are the following: 1. In the interpretation aforesaid one would, to be sure, expect וַתְּהִי instead of וְהָיְתָה, but the conscious connection need not lie precisely in the consciousness of the writer; he relates simply a matter of fact. And yet he must have been more enlightened in respect to the nature of things than our scientific man. A blind narration of facts would here be as inconsistent as a pure indication of a theosophic sense in thohu vabhohu2. Thohu has, indeed, a predominating privative character; it arises, however ( Isaiah 34:11; Isaiah 24:10; Jeremiah 4:23), from a positive destruction. But how natural was it to apply the pictorial thohu vabhohu to such a condition. What more purely privative than the word nothing? and yet we say it of positive states of destruction. According to Delitzsch, in the methods of its construction (world-brand, quenching-water) must Plutonism and Neptunism have reached their deepest grounding. The grounds that follow are in no respects better (p104). What have rendered the hypothesis suspicious from its beginning hitherto are its apocryphal or popular origin (Delitzsch, p105), its Gnostic coloring, and its affinity to that other scholastic phantasma that God had created men to fill up the vacuum in the fallen angel-world. It must, however, become very evident that the representation of an “overcoming of the darkness,” in the physical sense in which it here presents itself, is utterly foreign to the holy text; it is like the mingling of conceptions, namely of a physical and an ethical darkness. The representation, then, of Genesis 1:2 will be clearly a picturing of the primitive condition of the earth, as it became in consequence of the first general creation, Genesis 1:1. Besides, this hypothesis obliterates that line which everywhere else appears between the angelic and human regions and natures. Finally, Genesis 1:2, as a representation of the flowing, form-receptive condition of the earth-mass gives the bases for all farther ascending formations. Add to this that, in such case, the region of Lucifer would have been visited by the fire-judgment earlier than Lucifer himself—a representation which runs counter to the usual order of things—not to say, that, on such a supposition, Lucifer himself should have been rightly banished from the whole extent of the earth-region. Or, can it be that God has built the new house of humanity upon the foul beams of a demoniac power? But it is not worth our while to dwell more fully upon a representation which is so characterized by its own sharp contradictions.—And there was evening and there was morning.—Here, in the first place, we must not suppose that the evening and the morning were merely the sequence of the preceding darkness and of the light that followed it, notwithstanding that the first evening and morning so fittingly append themselves to such a contrast. Still less are we to think of the usual evening and morning, since the earth had not yet been astronomically arranged. Evening and morning denote rather the interval of a creative day, and this is evidently after the Hebrew mode of reckoning; the day is reckoned from sunset. The morning that follows stands for the second half of the day proper. In the same manner was the day reckoned by the Arabians, the Athenians (νυχθήμιρον), the Germans, and the Gauls. It is against the text for Delitzsch to put as the ground here the Babylonish reckoning of the day, namely from the dawning of the morning. The earlier theological representation, that by the creative periods were to be understood the usual astronomical days, is now only held by individuals (Baumgarten, Calwer Handbuch, Keil’s Genesis). It is opposed to this, in the first place, that the creative days are already numbered before the determination of the astronomical relation of the earth to the sun, although on other grounds must we hold that the days from the fourth onward were not astronomical; there are in the way, secondly, the idea of the first day whose evening had its beginning in that dark thohu vabhohu which had no evening before it, as well as the idea of the seventh day, the day of God’s rest, which is not defined by an evening and a morning, but runs on through the ordained course of the world; there is, thirdly, the idea of the day of God as it is given to us in the 90 th Psalm, which is traditionally ascribed to Moses ( Genesis 1:4). That this time-determination of a thousand years does not denote an exactly measured chronological period, but still a period defined by essential marks of time, appears from the converse of Psalm 90. in 2 Peter 3:8 (a thousand years as one day, and one day as a thousand years), and also from the thousand years of the judgment-time as the transition period from the present state of the world to that which lies beyond ( Revelation 20). This comprehensive significance has the divine day (God’s day) or the judgment-day pre-eminently in the Old Testament ( Isaiah 2:12; Joel 1:15; Ezekiel 13:5). Delitzsch, who also holds that the creative days are periods, reckons, as another argument, that in Genesis 2:4 the six days are denoted as one day. Add to this the very usual mode of speech, according to which, day in the Old Testament often denotes a longer duration of time, for example, in the formula even to this day. We are not, however, to conceive of the evening and morning of the single creative days as merely symbolic intervals of the day of God. According to the analogy of the first day, the evening is the time of a peculiar chaotic fermentation of things, whilst the morning is the time of that new, fair, solemn world-building that corresponds to it. With each evening there is also indicated a new birth-travail of things, a new earth-revolution which elevates the old formation that went before it—a seeming darkening, a seeming sunset or going down of the world; and so later with this same appearance came on the flood; and Song of Solomon, too, in ZaGen Genesis 14:7, the day of the commencing judgment is, with the highest significance, denoted an evening. No less significant is it in the eschatological words of our Lord: and the sun shall withdraw its light, Matthew 24:29. With each morning, on the contrary, there is a new, a higher, a fairer, and a richer state of the world. In this way do the evening and morning in the creative periods have the highest significance for an agreement of the sacred geology with the results of the scientific geology. The meaning would seem to be incorrectly taken by Delitzsch when he says: “With each effort of the divine creating is it morning, with each remission it is evening” (p106). The most peculiar work of God, we may rather say, would appear to be each of those stormy revolutions, in which the spirit of God hovers like an eagle over the chaotic fermentations; in the creative mornings, on the contrary, come in the holy rests when God surveys the new work and sees how good it Isa. (Comp. Von Rougemont, History of the Earth, p7: “Evening: a dark return of chaos.” Doubtless the designation lacks propriety in all respects, and yet it may lead to the right.)

[Note on the Relation of the First Verse of Genesis 1. to the Rest of the .—Among all the interpretations of Genesis 1, the most difficult as well as the most unsatisfactory is that which regards the first verse as referring to a period indefinitely remote, and all that follows as comprised in six solar days. It is barely hinted at by some of the patristic writers, but has become a favorite with certain modern commentators, as furnishing them with a method of keeping the ordinary days, and yet avoiding the geological difficulty, or seeming to avoid it, by throwing all its signs of the earth’s antiquity into this chasm that intervenes between the first and second verses. The objections to it may be thus stated:

(1) Besides the peculiar difficulties that attend any view of ordinary solar days, such as a morning and evening without a sun, or the language of succession, of growth, and of a seeming nature, without any consistent corresponding reality, there is another and greater incongruity in connecting this with a former and very different state of things, or mode of proceeding, with which, after all, it has no real connection either in the realm of nature or of divine providence.

(2) It is a building of this world on the ruins of a former, without any natural or moral reasons therefor. The states preceding, as understood by this hypothesis, were in no sense preparatory. The catastrophe which makes way for it seems entirely arbitrary, and in no sense resembles the pauses described in Genesis, each one of which is in the upward order, and anticipatory of the work that follows.

(3) It is evidently brought in as a possible escape from the difficulties of geology, and would never have been seriously maintained had it not been for them.

(4) It has to make the heavens of the first verse a different heavens from that of the eighth, without any exegetical warrant therefor. This is a rationalizing interpretation, carrying with it a conception of our modern astronomy, and almost wholly unknown to the Scriptures, which everywhere speaks of the heavens and the earth therein mentioned as one system. It is the heavens of our earth, built upon it as described in Genesis 1:6; Genesis 1:8; Psalm 104; 1 Samuel 2:8, etc, and always taken in connection with it; not a far-off astronomical heavens, though the rudiments of such an idea come afterwards into the Hebrew. Thus in predictions, whether of destruction or of renovation, the heavens and the earth go together. “I create new heavens and a new earth,” Isaiah 66:22; Psalm 102:27, and other passages. The language is exactly parallel to that of Genesis 1:1, and yet we cannot suppose that there is included here the astronomical heaven of stars and planets, at least according to the conceptions of our modern astronomy. It is a renewal of the earth, in some way, together with those celestial or sky phenomena that are in connection with it, as parts, in fact, of the tellurian system. It is the same language, the same mode of conceiving, as late down in Scripture as the 2 d Epistle of Peter Genesis 3:5-7—the “earth and heavens” that were of old before the flood are put in contrast with “the earth and heavens that are now,” and which are to be changed for “a new earth and heavens” “according to the promise ( Genesis 1:13) to which we look.” It is the same language that occurs repeatedly in the Revelations ( Genesis 21:1), and which, whatever we may think of its prophetic meaning, shows the fixedness of the conception down to the latest times of the scriptural canon.

(5) It violates the principles of a rational and grammatical exegesis, in making a separation between the first and second verses, of which there is no trace or reason in the language itself. If used in the same way in narrating historical events, in any other part of the Bible, no one would have thought of the verb בָּרָא, in the first, and הָיְתָה, in the second verse, otherwise than as cotemporaneous or, in direct continuation at least, with no chasm of time between them long or short. It would have been interpreted like the precisely similar sentence, Job 1:1 : “There was a man in the land of Uz, and the man was, etc, הָיָה אִישׁ בְאֶרֶץ־עוּץ וְהָיָה הָאִישׁ. Who would think of separating the second הָיָה here from the first, or sundering the evident continuity? If it be said that the context in Job controls, and the very nature of the subject, so should it also in Genesis, unless we make a new context after our own imaginations, especially as there are clear ways in Hebrew of expressing such a parting of the terms, had it been designed to do so.

Besides this, it is opposed to the usual force of the conjunction ו. Taken even as a mere copulative, it would not allow of such a sharp and remote severance. But ו is much more than this in Hebrew. It is seldom without a time sense, or an inferential sense, showing a connection, not only of mere event, but also of reason and causality. So here it shows the reason for the use of בָּרָא in the preceding verse. “In the beginning God created,” formed, fashioned, the earth; for it was formless and void, or when it was formless and void, etc. Let one take Noldius’ Concordance of the Hebrew Particles, and see how often (in the great majority of cases, we may say) the conjunction wau has this close-joining inferential sense. It is much more usual than its bare copulative force, but even this is out of harmony with the hypothesis of severance as commonly presented. See also Introd. to Genesis 1. pp129, 130.—T. L.]

6. Genesis 1:6-8. Second Creative Day.—Let there be a firmament.—Rakia (from רָקַע, to stretch, spread out, beat out) an extension or expansion, rendered in the LXX and by others, στερέυμα, and in the Vulgate firmamentum,—names which are more material than רָקִיעַ. Knobel: “The heaven was to the Hebrews a material substance ( Exodus 24:10), a fixed vault established upon the waters that surrounded the circle of the earth ( Proverbs 8:27), firm as a molten mirror ( Job 37:18), and borne up by the highest hills, which are therefore called the pillars and foundations of the heaven ( 2 Samuel 22:8; Job 26:11); openings or doors are ascribed to it ( Genesis 7:11; Genesis 28:17; Psalm 78:23). There are the same representations elsewhere.” But we must not forget that Hebrew modes of expression for objects that have a religious bearing, do ever contain a symbolical element which disdains the literal pressure. Therefore the stars which in Genesis 1:17 are fixed in the heaven, can nevertheless, according to Isaiah 40:26, set themselves in motion as a host of God; and hence it is that the one heaven expands itself into a heaven of heavens. And thus the heavens bends down to the earth ( Psalm 18:10); or is spread out like tapestry ( Psalm 104:2), or its beams are waters ( Genesis 1:3), whilst the same heaven again is called the footstool of God.—In the midst of the waters.—We must beware here of thinking of a mass of elementary water; quite as little could a fluid mass which is yet identified with the light be elementary, and just as little can it be a flood, or collection of water, which consists of the three factors air, earth, and water. At this point then is completed the second division. The true standpoint of contemplation would seem to be the view, that in the azure welkin of the sky the clouds appear to give out their evaporation, and to withdraw themselves behind the blue expanse like a supercelestial gathering of water ( Psalm 104:3; Psalm 104:13). It follows from this, however, that the visible clouds and the rain may be assigned to the lower collection of waters, and that there is meant here the gaseous water as it forms a unity with the air, and so makes an ethereal atmosphere (not “the water-masses that hover over the air-strata of the atmosphere”). Delitzsch here mistakes the symbolical element. “It must be admitted,” he says, “that in this the Old Testament is chargeable with a defect, for a physical connection between the descending rain-waters and the heavenly waters, which is also indicated in the New Testament ( Revelation 4:6) cannot be maintained.” Indeed, it is with the actual physical connection between the invisible collection of water (the gas-formed) and the visible, that the contrast is established; it is the polaric tension which even the phenomenological extension brings to view. But why should the Septuagint correct the text here with the addition, Genesis 1:8 : And God saw, whilst the Hebrew text has it not? Had the prophetic author some anticipation that the blue vault of heaven was merely an appearance, whilst the savans of the Septuagint had no such anticipation, and, therefore, proceeded to doctor the passage? There may, indeed, be an exaggeration of this conception of the upper waters, since Philoponus and the other church fathers understand by the same the ether that is beyond the earth’s atmosphere; nevertheless, their view would seem to be more correct than that which refers the expression to a proper cloud-formed atmospheric water.—And God named the firmament heaven, שָׁמָיִם. See Genesis 1:1. Delitzsch: Here is meant the heaven of the earth-world; Genesis 1:1, on the contrary, refers to the heaven and the heaven of heavens. But if the firmament is “the immeasurable far-reaching height,” there is a failure, or falling short, in the limiting of the conception. A main point appears to be, that the rakia is presented to view as the symbolic dividing of the super-earthly heaven, a phenomenal appearance of that house of God to which all who pray to God look up. For the later cosmological interpretations of the upper waters, see Delitzsch, p108.

7. Genesis 1:9-13. Third Creative Day.

Genesis 1:9. Let the waters be gathered together.—The bringing the earth into form and the creation of the vegetable world.—That the physical dividing of the earth-mass and of the water-mass is here presented, is clear. There would appear, however, to be signified a preceding chemical separation of both elements, which had withdrawn themselves from the inner or under core of the earth. The expression יקָּווּ הַמַּיִםdenotes properly not merely an outward assembling, but an intensive close combining (see Gesenius, קָוָה). Upon the formation of the water proper, as it is now introduced, is conditioned the firm underlying of the earth. The completing of this division, however, has for its consequence that flowing together of the water into its peculiar place, with which immediately the self-forming earth-soil now comes into visibility. It is thereby implied that the elevations and depressions of the earth’s surface—the hills and vales, the highlands and the ocean-depths—are here formed, just as it is so precisely set forth, Psalm 104:6-8 (with which compare Proverbs 8:24). And Song of Solomon, too, the creation of the hills is here only indicated, or rather presented, as a consequence of the creation of the sea (see Psalm 90:2; Deuteronomy 33:15; Habakkuk 3:3). Thus much is clear: as long as the water and the earth-mass are not divided, there can be no mention of any origination of the hills. With the sea-life, however, must begin also the earth-life, that is, the working of the inner earth-fire that causes the up-heavings. It is a wrong apprehension of the waters of Genesis 1:2 and Genesis 1:6, when one takes the story of cretion as favoring a one-sided Neptunism (Wagner). The volcanic action of the earth in the formation of the earth, is not expressed, indeed, but it is throughout freely implied; it would appear to be indicated, Psalm 104:8. There is truly no difficulty in supposing that the formation of the hills kept on through the succeeding creative days. In respect to this, Delitzsch expresses himself better than Hofmann: “Generally,” says Hebrews, “the works of the single creative days consist only in laying foundations; the birth-process that is introduced in each, extends its efficacy beyond it, and, in this sense we say with Hofmann (i. p278): ‘Not how long, but how many times, God created is the thing intended to be set forth.’ ” Much more have we to distinguish between the distinct creative acts and the creative evolutions. Even after the creative division of the first day the evolving of light may still go on, and the same thought holds good of the efficacy of the succeeding acts of each of the other days. The act itself means the introduction of a new principle out of the word of God, which, as such, has the form of an epoch-creating event.

Genesis 1:10. And God named the dry earth land, that is, earth-soil in the narrower sense, and, therefore, it is that אֶרֶץ has no article.—And the water named he sea.—Properly seas, “or rather ocean; for it is more intensive than a numerical plural, and is therefore (as in Psalm 46:4) construed in the singular.” Delitzsch. On the other hand, Knobel would make prominent the singleness of the seas in the rendering Weltmeer, or world-sea, main sea, or ocean.—And God saw.—Now has the earth-formation come into visibility, though only in its first outlines, or, according to the idea of the naturalist, as an insular appearing of the land-region as it unfolds itself to view.—Let the earth bring forth (sprout, germinate).—It is agreeable to the nature of the earth as well as of the plant that both are together as soon as possible. The earth has an inclination to germinate, the plant to appear. In truth, its origination is a new creative act. In the proper place is this creation narrated; for the plant denotes the transformation of the elementary materials, earth, air, water, which are now present in organic life through the inward working of the light. It forms the preconditioning, as the sign or prognostic, of the awaiting animal creation. And though it has need of the light too in some measure, it does not yet want the sunshine in its first subordinate kinds. The question now arises, whether we must distinguish three kinds of plants: דֶּשֶׁא, tender green;עֵשֶׁב, herbs and shrubs, vegetables and grain (or the smaller growths generally), and עֵץ כְּרִי, fruit-tree, according to the view of Knobel, embracing all trees inasmuch as they all bear seed. Delitzsch, as well as Knobel, assumes this threefold division. Farther on, however, we see that the more general kinds precede (lights, water-swarmings), in order that they may become more or less specific. And here דֶּשֶׁא may present the universal conception of all vegetable life in its first germination (although including along with it the more particular kinds of cryptogamic and the grasses), whilst in this way the contrast between the herbaceous plants and the trees becomes more prominent (Umbreit, Ewald). Thence, too, it appears that the sign of seed-formation, of propagation, and of particular specification, is ascribed to all plants. Closer observations in respect to single particulars may be found in Knobel. We must protest against the exposition of Delitzsch: “Its origination follows in that way which is unavoidable to a creative beginning, and which is to it essentially what is called a generatio equivoca; that is, it does this in measure as the earth, through the word of the divine power, receives strength to generate the vegetable germ.” The sentence contains a contradiction in so far as the question still relates to the divine word of power; but this divine word of power creates not merely a strength, or force, in general;¹⁰ each new and distinct creative word introduces a new and distinct principle into the already existing sphere of nature—a principle which hitherto had not been present in it. Along with the various species and seeds, along with the determinate propagation of plants, each after its kind, there clearly and distinctly comes in that conception of nature which is already announced in the great contrasts. The words: upon the earth, עַל־הָאָרְץ ( Genesis 1:11), are interpreted by Knobel of the high growth of the trees (over the earth) in contrast with the plants which cleave closer to the ground, and which are regarded by Delitzsch as a present clothing of the earth. With respect to Genesis 1:20, we may assume that Knobel is right. In the contemplation of the young world, this majestic rising above the earth in the case of the tall trees, as in that of the birds, has a peculiar excitement for the imagination. With the plants there appears the first thing that is distinctly symbolic of life as well as of their individual beauty.

8. Genesis 1:14-19. Fourth Creative Day. Beginning of the second triad.—The preconditions of the now expectant animal and human life, are the lights of heaven, the stars, or heavenly bodies, partly as physical quickening powers, and partly as signs of the division of time for the human culture-world. It is theirs, in the first place, to make the distinction between day and night, between light and darkness, and to rule over the day and night—to make that great contrast upon which the human developments, as well as the animal nature-life, are essentially conditioned, such as sleep, waking, generation, diversities in the animal world—animals of the day and animals of the night, etc. It agrees well with the text, that again, whilst it makes a more special mention of the ordinance of the heavenly bodies, it gives the chief prominence to their spiritual or humane appointment: let them be for signs and for festivals, and for days, and for years. The question arises here, whether these appointments are to be taken as four (Luther, Calvin, Delitzsch, Knobel); or that three are meant: namely, for signs of times, for days, and for years (Rosenmüller, Eichhorn, De Wette, Baumgarten); or only two: for signs, for times, including in the latter both days and years (Schumann, Maurer). For the first view, indeed, there speaks the simple series of the appointments, but there is, too, the consideration that the spiritual (or ecclesiastical) appointments of the heavenly bodies are not exhausted in the chronological. The sign אוֹת has oftentimes in the Old Testament a religious significance. Thus the rainbow is established for the sign (אוֹת) of the covenant between Jehovah and Noah, together with his sons ( Genesis 9:12). Later, Abraham receives in the starry heaven a sign of the divine promise. But when it is said ( Jeremiah 10:2): Ye must not be afraid of the signs of heaven, there is not reprobated therein the meaning of the signs of heaven in their right significance, but only the heathenish misconception of them. The primitive religion was throughout symbolic; it was a contemplation of the invisible deity through symbolic signs, and the most universal of them were sun, moon, and stars. It was thus that the primitive symbolic religion became heathenish; the religious symbolic degenerated into an irreligious mythical; the glory of God was suffered to pass away in the form of transitory signs; it became identified with them, whilst men utterly lost the consciousness of the difference. The true representatives of the primitive religion on its light-side held fast this consciousness, as in the example of Melchizedek; but they reverenced God as such under the name El Elion (God Most High). It is an improper inference when Knobel here would refer this to the unusual phenomena of the heaven, such as the darkening or eclipse of the sun and moon, the red aspect of the latter (in an eclipse), the comets, the fiery appearances, etc. Moreover, we cannot find indicated here, as Delitzsch does, an astrological importance of the heavenly bodies, on which he remarks: “This ancient universally accepted influence is undeniable, a thing not to be called in question in itself considered, but only in its extent.” The question refers to the signs of the theocratic belief, such as are celebrated Psalm 8. and Psalm 19, from which the culture-signs of agriculture, navigation, and travel, must not be excluded. Thence, by right consequence, must be added the festival signs, מוֹעֲדִים. Moed, it is true, denotes, in general, an appointed time, but it comes in close connection with the word Jehovah before the festival seasons. The significant time-sections of the Israelites were, moreover, religious sabbaths, new moons ( Psalm 104:19), and yearly festivals which were likewise regulated by the moon. Upon the two religious appointments of the heavenly bodies (signs of belief, signs of worship) follow the two ethical and humane: the determination of the days and therewith of the days-works—the determination of the years and therewith the regulation of life and its duration. Hereupon follows the more common determination of the heavenly lights for the animal life in general.—To give light upon the earth.—With the light of the sun there is also determined its vital warmth. Thus the text speaks first of the appointment of the heavenly bodies for the earth-world ( Genesis 1:14-15), and then of the creation of the luminaries in their variety and distinct appointments, in which the stars form a special class, Genesis 1:16. After this there is mention of their location and their efficacy; their place is the firmament; their primary operation is to give light; next follows their government, that is, that peculiar determination of the day and night that is necessary for the preservation of life. The third thing is the division between light and darkness, the instituting of the vicissitude of day and night. For here must the dividing of light from darkness denote something quite different from that of Genesis 1:4; it is not the division of the luminous and the shadowy, but of the day-light and the night-shadow themselves. But now arises the question: How comes it that the first mention of the creation of the heavenly bodies is on the fourth day? It follows from the fundamental cosmical laws that the earth, before the sun, was not prepared for bringing forth the plants. It is saying too little to affirm that this place must only be understood phenomenally, or that the earlier created heavenly bodies make their first appearance on the fourth day along with the clearing-up of the atmosphere. But, on the other hand, surely, it is saying too much, when we assume that the formation of the starry world, or even of our own solar and planetary system, had its beginning in the fourth creative period. This representation is inorganic, abnormal. It is just as little supported by any sound cosmogony as demanded by the scriptural text. As little as the text requires that in general the first light of the universe should have its origination cotemporaneous with the light out of the thohu vabhohu of the earth, just as little does the place before us demand that we should date the absolutely first formation of the heavenly bodies from the fourth creative day. This, however, agrees well with our text, that both the appearing of the starry world, and the development and operation of the solar system, were first made ready for the earth on that same day in which the earth became ready for the sun. On the fourth creative day, therefore, there is completed the cosmical regulation of the world for the earth, and of the earth for the world. See more under the Theological and Ethical.

9. Genesis 1:20-23. Fifth Creative Day.—Corresponding then to the second day (of the first triad) we have here (on the second day of the second triad) the animation of the water and the air in the marine and winged creatures. The creation of the marine animals begins first. It is not only because they are the most imperfect creatures, but because the water is a more quickening and a more primitive conditioning of life than the earth. The like holds true of the air. It is clear, moreover, that the land-animals in their organization stand nearer to men than the birds; nevertheless they are not, in all respects, more perfect than the birds; and of these latter, as of the trees, it is emphatically said that they hover high over the earth. Indeed, as birds of the heaven, they are assigned to the heaven, as the fish to the water, as the land-animals to the earth, and so far correctly, since they not merely soar above the earth, and have their proper life in the air, but also because they are in part water-fowl and not merely land-birds. This graphic nature-limning is, moreover, to be noticed here in the formation of the fishes and the birds, as at an earlier stage in the formation of the plants. The first animals are now more carefully denoted as living souls, נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּח (soul of life). On this Delitzsch remarks: “The animal does not merely have soul, it is soul; since the soul is its proper being, and the body is only its appearing.” That might hold in respect to men, but it could hardly be said of the animal (see Psalm 104:29-30). It is true, the beast is animated; it has an animal principle of sensation and of motion which is the ground of its appearing, but as soul it is inseparably connected with all animal soul-life,¹¹ that is, the life of nature. Knobel translates: Let the waters swarm a swarm. This conception is still more lively and pictorial than that of our translation (es sollen wimmeln die Wasser vom Gewimmel, let the water swarm with or from a swarm); nevertheless we hold the latter to be more correct, since the causality of the swarm cannot lie in the water itself,¹² but in the creative word.—And let birds fly and fly (fly about).—The strong sense of the Hebrew conjugation Pilel (יְעוֹפֵף) cannot be expressed by the simple words let fly. The element of the formation, the air, is not here given; for it is clear that they are not referred to the water in their origin.¹³ One might think here in some way of the upper waters; but the birds are under the firmament. Their element is the very firmament of heaven, just where the two waters are divided. On its underside, or that which is turned towards the earth (עַל־פְּנֵי), must the birds fly. They belong just as much to the earth as to the water and the air; therefore are they assigned to no special district, Genesis 1:21. The great water-animals (תַּנִּין, long-extended), a word which is elsewhere used of the serpent, the crocodile, the marine monsters, but not specially of fishes. “These, with the insects that live in the water, worms, etc, are all here to be understood under נֶפֶשׁ הַיָּה (soul of life).” Knobel. That the animal creation had its beginning mainly with the water-animals we learn from natural science; but whether with the vertebrated animals? (Delitzsch.) All birds of wing, translates Knobel. We would rather take כָּנָף as a more general designation: winged, which would also include the insects. Delitzsch correctly rejects the old view, which is restored by Knobel, namely that the author meant to represent God as having always created each species of animals in one pair; for one pair cannot swarm, and with a swarm the animal creation begins. With good ground, however, does Delitzsch maintain that for the animals there were determined central points of creation, p117. None the more, however, can we approve what he says of the generatio æquivoca of the water and air-animals out of water and earth; since we must throughout acquiesce in the opinion that the creative word establishes something new—new life-principles, and here also the respective animal-principles, in water and air.

Genesis 1:22. And God blessed them, and said.—We must hold as scholastic the question started and debated by Chateaubriand and others, whether God blessed also the animals that were buried in the hills. The special consecration to fertility, in the case of the fishes and birds, carries back a fact of the nature-life to the divine causality; we refer to their infinitely abundant multiplication. Besides, it suits well the fifth day, or the number five, that the symbols of mightiest life-motion, the fishes and the birds, are created on this day. The animals of lesser physical motion, but of more intensive individual sensation, come after them.

10. Genesis 1:24-25. Sixth Creative Day. First half.—The creation of the land-animals stands in parallelism with the creation of the firm land on the third day. On the third day, remarks Delitzsch, וַיֹּאמֶר (and he said) is repeated only twice, but on the sixth day four times. “Truly is this day thereby denoted as the crown of the others (the crown of all is the sabbath). The sixth day’s work has its eye on man. In advancing nearness to him are the animals created.” The general creation of נֶפֶשׁ הַיָּה (soul of life, or living soul) divides itself here, 1. into cattle (בְּהֵמָה from בָהַם), the tame land-animals (not utterly dull or stupid; for the horse is less dull than the sloth) to whom in their intercourse with men speech appears wanting; 2. into the reptile that crawls upon the soil (whether it be the footless or the thousand-footed) and the other animals that move about upon the earth as the birds fly about in the heaven; 3. beasts of the earth, or the wild beasts that roam everywhere through the earth.—Let the earth bring forth: That is, in the formative material of the earth, in the awakened life of the earth, the creative word of God brings forth the land-animals. According to the older opinions (see Knobel) it was the greater power of the sun that woke up this new animal life; according to Ebrard it was the volcanic revolutions of the earth. Delitzsch disputes this, p119. We must distinguish, however, between a volcanic commotion of the earth’s crust and its partial eruptions. At all events, the land-animals presuppose a warm birth-place. And yet the Vulcanism, or volcanic power, must have been already active at a far earlier period, on the third day at least, and as long as the water was not water (proper) must the creative power of fire have been in the water itself.

11. Genesis 1:26-31. Sixth Creative Day. Second half. The Creation of Man.—Wherefore does the creation of man and of the land-animals fall on one and the same creative day? It is because man, as to his bodily appearance, has his being from the earth in common with the animals, and because the formations of the sixth day correspond to that formation of the earth which took place on the third day From this it follows that on the third day the formation of the earth was the main thing rather than that of the sea. At all events, there comes here between the two creative acts a solemn pause resembling a creative evening. God, as it were, stays his hand, and holds a special counsel before he goes on with the work; whereas he had always, until now, immediately uttered the creative word. The idea of man becomes the clear decree for his creation.—We would (or, We will) make man.—It must not be read as though it were a rousing of Himself: Let us make man. But why the plural? There are various explanations: 1. The plural is without meaning (Rosenmüller, and others); 2. it is a self-challenging (Tuch); 3. the three persons of the Trinity (church-fathers, Paschasius, and others in the middle ages; Calvin, Gerhard, etc.). That the Old Testament knows nothing of a divine tri-unity, as Knobel will have it, is not true; yet the trinitarian idea only unfolds itself germinally in the Old Testament, and here it had not yet come to its development4. God’s taking counsel with the angels (Targum of Jonathan, the Jewish interpreters;¹⁴ Delitzsch, with reference to the Babylonian and Persian myths; yet the passage must not be so understood that the angels take part in the creation except by way of communication; God communicates to them his resolution). Of angels, however, the text has no trace, and the places cited by Delitzsch, Psalm 8; Hebrews 2:7; Luke 20:36, prove nothing. Although the angels are called spirits and sons of God, yet the Scriptures accurately distinguish between the angelic and the human nature, and there seems to be an impropriety in the mingling of the divine and the angelic image. Moreover, from this human creation it is that we have the first disclosure of the existence of any spirit-world in general5. Pluralis majestaticus, or pluralis intensivus (Grotius, Gesenius, Neumann, Knobel). It must be noted that the plural is carried into the word בצלמנו (in our image), etc. This appears to go beyond the pluralis majestaticus, and to point to the germinal view of a distinction in the divine personality, directly in favor of which is the distinction of Elohim and Ruah Elohim, or that of God and his Wisdom of Solomon, as this distinction is made, Proverbs 8, with reference to the creation. Although צלם and דמות, as well as the particles בְּ and כְּ, are used promiscuously (Knobel, Delitzsch), yet still the double designation does not serve merely to give a stronger emphasis to the thought (Knobel). In that case the stronger expression צלם ought to come last. צלם is the shadow of the figure, the shadow-outline, the copy, and therefore also the idol. דמות is the resemblance, the comparison, the example, the appearance. And whilst בּ denotes the near presence of an object, as in, or within, close to or in it, into, whether in a friendly or a hostile sense, near by, etc, כְּ expresses the relation of similarity or likeness, as as, in some degree, like as, instead of, etc. The former preposition denotes the norm, the form, mass, number, and kind of a thing; the latter its relation, similarity, equality, proportion, in reference to some other thing. According to this, in our image means, after the principle, or the norm of our image; but as our likeness means, so that it be our likeness. The image denotes the ideal, and therefore also the disposition, the being, the definition; the likeness denotes the actuality, the appearing. As the likeness of God, man is set (placed, appointed); but the image of God he is made to become (fit, factus est) through his most interior assimilation, his ideal formative impulse (or that tendency that forms him to the idea).¹⁵ For the dogmatic treatment of this, see farther below. Knobel and Delitzsch, following the Syriac Version, are of opinion that חַיַּת (beast) has fallen out before הָאָרֶץ (the earth); but wherefore should the dominion of man be limited merely to the animal-world? Through his lordship can man domesticate the wild beast; he may also rule over the plant-world, and over the earth absolutely. This, in its widest acceptation, is set forth, Genesis 1:28. In this divine viceroyship must his possession of the image first reveal itself; it must be the likeness of his higher and more intense conformity.

Genesis 1:27. Very explicitly is this divine-imaged nature of man presented, in a twofold manner along with his creation.—As man and woman.—Properly, as male and female created he them. Rightly does Umbreit remark: “The language here soars to a most concise song of triumph, and we meet, for the first time, with the parallelism of members.” In three parallel members, and therefore in the highest poetical form, does the narrative celebrate the creation of man. Concerning the derivation of men from one pair, see below.

Genesis 1:28. And God blessed them (אוֹתָם, them, not אוֹתוֹ, him, according to the Septuagint) and said to them.—“God blesses, too, the new created man but with two blessings. For besides the power of propagation which they have in common with the beasts ( Genesis 1:22), they hold moreover the dominion over them. The same is enlarged after the flood.” Knobel. “The striving after the rhythmical-poetical parallelism presents itself in these words:

and Elohim blessed them,

and Elohim said unto them.” Delitzsch.

Yet the blessing sounds hardly “like a summons to the subjection of hostile powers.” The relation of the soul to the outer world, especially “the feature of self-hood in all creature-life,” was not originally adverse, as is held by Bellarmin, or even by Zwingli. And thus is man first pictured to us, and then his calling, to which it belongs that he must rule his own proper sensual nature, as he rules all living, or all that is animal in the earth—the word being taken here in its most universal sense. The laborer is worthy of his reward. The ruler of the earth is himself conditioned. He needs nourishment, and, therefore ( Genesis 1:29), there is pointed out to him his sustenance.—Behold, I have given you (Lange’s translation: I have appointed for you).—Together with the nourishment of man ( Genesis 1:29) there is appointed the nourishment of the beasts ( Genesis 1:30). What is common to both is the appointment of the use of vegetable food; the distinction is that man shall have the use of the herb with its seed, that is in itself, and of the fruit-tree, whilst the beast, on the other hand, has the green of the herb. The meaning of this is, that for man there is the corn (or core) of nature, for the beast the shell or husk. “According to the Hebrew view, therefore, men, at first, lived only upon vegetables, and at a later time there first came in the. use of flesh ( Genesis 9:3). The rest of antiquity agreed with this.” Knobel. For the citations from Plato, Plutarch, etc, that belong here, see p20. According to Delitzsch, this is not a mere view of antiquity, but farther, he says, “God did not originally will the violent breaking up of the life of one living thing by another for the purpose of enjoying its flesh, since that would be utterly against his clearly expressed will in their creation.” Oerstedt (in his “Spirit in Nature”) avers “that we have clear proofs that corporeal evil, ruin, sickness, and death, were older than the fall.” Delitzsch characterizes this “as a shout of triumph which ever becomes clearer in favoring the grossest materializing atheism.” And so also he says, with A. Wagner (in his “Primitive World”), that as the body of man after his fall underwent an essential alteration in its material ground, so likewise there must have gone before an analogous change and transformation in the animal-world. We see not how a naturalist can think of such a transformation of organic nature; still less how we can call in question the fact of a death that had come upon all species of animals before the fall of Adam, without taking along with it the theosophic interpretation of the thohu vabhohu as a Golgotha of the Devil’s kingdom. On this supposition, too, it is not easy to explain the difference of the cattle and the wild creature in our chapter—just as little, too, the fact that immediately after the fall the skins of animals are at hand for the clothing of man; or that it is the pious Abel who brings the animal sacrifice to the altar, and not Cain. Again, it will help us very little to call in aid, as Delitzsch does, the Brahmanic and the Buddistic laws, and the Pythagorean doctrines (p125). In truth, there is still a great chasm between the tenable supposition that the paradisaical man put to death no animal, or could do Song of Solomon, and the arbitrary inference that even within the animal-world itself everything was so disposed that no beast even ate another. Moreover, in this view, the representation of death itself is not wholly freed from the fear of death. The consequence of this same theory would be, that even an insect that had once lived could never die. But shall a natural death, so called, as when an old hind expires from want of air, or from hunger, be regarded as any more natural than the death which takes place under the jaws of the lion? In this all too gentle representation there lacks the heroic power—the spirit of sacrifice. May one suppose that the first specimens of the beasts had not been disorganized like the later animal, and that they did not experience any important transformations, still a literal change of a grass-eating into a flesh-eating lion must be regarded as a radical transformation. As for the rest, our text denotes only the basis of the law of nourishment for the animal existence, and this basis is for man the fruit, the herb, the grain, for the cattle the pasturage and the fodder. In indulging our idealizing view of the primitive world, that it was wholly without death, we should not overlook the fact that it was an ill habit of the old heathenism, in its view of the world, to confound sin with death, or even with the natural unfolding of life. Thus the poems that Knobel too makes mention of, and according to which even the ravenous beasts originally lived upon vegetable food.

Genesis 1:31. And, behold, it was very good.—At the seventh time it is said not merely good, but very good, because in man the keystone of creation is reached. The possibilities of the ruin of man and of the world are for the pure paradisaical state curæ posteriores, just as the destinies of manhood are for the thinking of the child. For the theosophic view, the undivine lay only bound under the new order of things. That in general the demoniac evil was already in the world is not denied, but the six days’ work, taken as the world in general, or as God had made it, was very good, that is, perfect; κόσμος, κάλλιστον (Thales).¹⁶

Footnotes